Political Quotes

“I rise to discuss what I discussed earlier in the day. In fact, I think it was this morning when I spoke to the reason why this legislation is not moving along. I am not going to repeat what I said then, but since then the minority leader came to the floor and gave reasons for this bill not moving along, and so I will once again bring up some important issues about this legislation and rebut the other side on why we are not moving forward with this bill. As we all know, this bill was unveiled in January after weeks of negotiation among our respective staff. It has been in the public domain since it was introduced in January. Since that time, we have followed regular order with respect to this legislation. We had a hearing on this bill. We scheduled a markup in February, and amendments were offered to the bill at that markup. The ranking member offered an amendment to the very same section of the bill that included this language. Numerous committee members took the opportunity to speak about the bill during the hearing and markup. The markup offered a prime opportunity for any member--including the minority members of the Senate--to ask questions and make changes and strip out language to which they might have objected. We promised regular order during floor consideration as well, just as we have on practically every other piece of legislation that has been before the Senate since the new majority has taken over.…”